I always hated seeing red on my papers as a student.
Are Black Inmates Higher Status (inside)?
That’s my twilight zone headline interpretation of Alex Tabarrock’s post here.
I love reading what he writes.
JD Salinger – Something of a Madman
CAD = OIL
Stephen Gordon has a toy model that works.
Almost Got my Wish
Robin is bombarded with links to the OK Cupid article I commented on here
Unfortunately he doesn’t really get around to discussing it. He cites research that suggests that old people are more emotional because their intellectual capacities decline and examines the question of age related political orientation as it relates to a shift in the relative importance of emotional and informational processing.
From the abstract, it isn’t clear that the declining ability to reason suggests an equal decline in the willingness to reason is established. Just because someone isn’t any good at something any more (relative to his youth) doesn’t mean he’ll be unwilling to do it.
For these purposes I much prefer the data set the OKCupid folks use. Hopefully Robin will give us a more complete analysis of the OKCupid post later.
So Armageddon (Starring Bruce Willis) Was MISLEADING!?
Miracles in Oz
This commentary suggests that the Aussie economic resilience is attributable (in part) to strong population growth.
Very interesting. If there’s one thing that Scott Sumner (gets the h/t here, too) has taught me, it is that we focus too much on real per capita figures too much. Sure they’re the best measure of progress, but that means they’re great yardsticks for output from the economy; it doesn’t suggest that they’re very good as inputs from the feedback loop.
Inputs are nominal.
Blondes Earn More
Smart Meters and Silly People
They monitored the power used by each household and then wrote each homeowner a note comparing their consumption with the neighbourhood average.
Ok, so far so good.
A week later households with above-average power usage had reduced it significantly – but those with below-average usage had increased theirs
What?!
The researchers found that the low-energy users could be prevented from using more power simply by drawing a smiley face on the notes to indicate that conserving energy carries approval.
Hilarious.
I always thought that simply giving people the data on consumption would probably be enough to convince them to change their behaviour.
What I forget is that without a carbon tax, there simply isn’t any real financial incentive to conserve energy. Happily, we all feel like conservation is something that PEOPLE SHOULD DO, so peer pressure can be introduce with more data. Notice the pressure is implied, nobody actually has to know what others consume.
“If Charlie Manson is your dad, are you supposed to love him?”
“I feel empathy for him,” Roberts muses. “And that’s very similar to love, in my world. But I don’t necessarily need him to love me. I just accept it. It wasn’t like I was loved and then my parents took their love away from me. When I came to know them, they were unlovable.”
Weird stuff. Especially all the similar mannerisms (no, not killing and crazy stuff) manifesting before he even knew. If it’s true.
Not Unreasonable 